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tales of Winesburg and of how he
would enjoy his life working in the fields and shooting
wild things in the woods there. She could not believe
that the tiny village of fifty years before had grown
into a thriving town in her absence, and in the morning
when the train came to Winesburg did not want to get
off. "It isn't what I thought. It may be hard for you
here," she said, and then the train went on its way and
the two stood confused, not knowing where to turn, in
the presence of Albert Longworth, the Winesburg baggage
master.

But Tom Foster did get along all right. He was one to
get along anywhere. Mrs. White, the banker's wife,
employed his grandmother to work in the kitchen and he
got a place as stable boy in the banker's new brick
barn.

In Winesburg servants were hard to get. The woman who
wanted help in her housework employed a "hired girl"
who insisted on sitting at the table with the family.
Mrs. White was sick of hired girls and snatched at the
chance to get hold of the old city woman. She furnished
a room for the boy Tom upstairs in the barn. "He can
mow the lawn and run errands when the horses do not
need attention," she explained to her husband.

Tom Foster was rather small for his age and had a large
head covered with stiff black hair that stood straight
up. The hair emphasized the bigness of his head. His
voice was the softest thing imaginable, and he was
himself so gentle and quiet that he slipped into the
life of the town without attracting the least bit of
attention.

One could not help wondering where Tom Foster got his
gentleness. In Cincinnati he had lived in a
neighborhood where gangs of tough boys prowled through
the streets, and all through his early formative years
he ran about with tough boys. For a while he was a
messenger for a telegraph company and delivered
messages in a neighborhood sprinkled with houses of
prostitution. The women in the houses knew and loved
Tom Foster and the tough boys in the gangs loved him
also.

He never asserted himself. That was one thing that
helped him escape. In an odd way he stood in the shadow
of the wall of life, was meant to stand in the shadow.
He saw the men and women in the houses of lust, sensed
their casual and horrible love affairs, saw boys
fighting and listened to their tales of thieving and
drunkenness, unmoved and strangely unaffected.

Once Tom did steal. That was while he still lived in
the city. The grandmother was ill at the time and he
himself was out of work. There was nothing to eat in
the house, and so he went into a harness shop on a side
street and stole a dollar and seventy-five cents out of
the